Healing
by CretianStar
Summary: One shot following the Battle for Manhattan. You know fluffballs and healing stuff.


A/N: A fairly short little number on Clintasha. No excuses really apart from this happened instead of tidying my room and doing my work. It's a procrastination baby. Enjoy. (All mistakes are my own blah-de-blah)

* * *

Clint forgot the basic principle when he came round from Loki's brainwashing.

He forgot Natasha's whole existence was having someone else play with her head. He was insensitive and as soon as her soft murmur replied he realised the impact of his words.

He wanted to make amends but Loki still tinged the edges. He didn't want to make it worse, he knew his comment had stung because she was being gentle with him. At first it didn't occur to him that her gentleness was actually because she nearly lost him.

Then she was compromised.

It played on his mind the whole way through the fight for Manhattan but he didn't know how to put it into words.

Natasha and Clint were used to the physical. Budapest, London, Paris, all had been physical but now Clint realised they had _needed_ one another. They could have slept with anyone else – neither were hard on the eyes but they had chosen each other. Not some easy stranger on the streets, they had unknowingly turned to each other for trust and comfort, even if they would both deny it.

After the battle for Manhattan, he found her in one of the apartment's they owned.

"Tasha."

She said nothing when she had opened the door, just stared at him. Cuts and bruises littered her body and she limped as she let him in. He did the same, his clothes torn in places and he followed her in, dumping his empty quiver at the door along with his precious bow. Currently the only precious thing to him was Nat.

She sat heavily on the sofa and he turned her face to look at him. When she refused he bent to her level, ignoring the pain in his knee as the wound was pulled open once more. She noted the minute wince. She pushed him onto his cut back and he groaned in pain. She raised an eyebrow and he smirked back at her.

She attempted to get up and he watched in concern as her face contorted in pain and with some trepidation they realised this was not going to be a passionate affair. That could come later as he pulled himself upright, the pair grunting in pain as they hobbled to the bathroom.

He'd only bathed her once, fully anyway and never for sex. He'd bathed her when Tasha had almost died in Namibia and cleaned all of her wounds when she'd been out cold. She had thought it was a SHIELD medic that had patched her up and not her partner. But now they slowly peeled off the cat suits and spandex, taking in the cuts and gashes littering their body.

Natasha had a first aid kit in the bathroom cupboard and carefully they stitched each other up, Clint smoothed a wash cloth over a gouge in her shoulder as she picked shrapnel out of his leg. Finally when all the bandage had been used up and there was a pile of bloody antiseptic wipes on the edge of the bath there was an unspoken agreement of sleep.

They needed sleep.

Tomorrow they would face Fury, the Council and sending Loki home. Clint felt his stomach roil with apprehension and anger at seeing the Trickster God. Still he felt his vision tinged by blue as memories of his time returned in fragmented dreams and broken thoughts. It scared him. Not knowing his own mind. Suddenly he was all too aware of the nightmares he'd seen his partner suffer and the way she hid them. He did the same. Clint knew Tasha witnessed his sweating convulsing nightmares as he'd watched her whine and curl deeper into the covers. There was a mutual trust between them anyway and now there was another common principle between them.

Clint held a new respect for Tasha as he battled with his own mind and thoughts that night. She held herself in check so often, he now recognised that faraway look she often shook off was about her past life. Sometimes he'd wondered whether she was regretting her decision to deflect to America and then he realised the expression was one of carefully controlled horror – a memory that had enveloped her in all of its senses; she was no longer Tasha of SHIELD, in that one look he knew she was back to being Natalia of the Red Room.

Tasha watched that self-same expression appear on the face of her partner as he struggled with his conscience over Loki's interception. She watched it now in the limited light of her bedroom, he had fallen into a rather fitful sleep and the fear was evident on his face. She wondered if her own nightmares were so clearly displayed in her sleep, after all she had woken from a nightmare herself and was now intently staring at the man before her.

Before her rational, assassin trained mind could take over she followed a different set of instincts and wrapped her arms around him. Instantly his the furrow in his brow softened and his breathing eased a little, Natasha also felt a sense of calm sweep through her system, she felt her eyes close once more as the fatigue of the battle overtook her and she too drifted off into a more peaceful slumber.


End file.
